


Only the Beginning, Only Just a Start

by spinninginfinity



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 12:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19425664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinninginfinity/pseuds/spinninginfinity
Summary: Han falls in love, and keeps falling.It starts like this: they’re arguing about something, as they’re prone to doing. This particular argument isn’t even just between him and Leia, at first; it began elsewhere and became a sort of base-wide free-for-all, only Han has lost track of what it’s about, and everyone else has lost interest in participating.So there’s really only Leia telling him off about something, and it sounds like she might have a valid point, but also, her chin is jutting up toward him and her hair is working loose from its braid, and the fact that she’s beautiful has just hit Han like a hovertrain.





	Only the Beginning, Only Just a Start

**Author's Note:**

> A short and sweet offering for [hanleiachallenge](https://hanleiachallenge.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, for the prompt "Beginning".
> 
> Title from "Beginnings" by Junip.

It starts like this: they’re arguing about something, as they’re prone to doing. This particular argument isn’t even just between him and Leia, at first; it began elsewhere and became a sort of base-wide free-for-all, only Han has lost track of what it’s about, and everyone else has lost interest in participating.

So there’s really only Leia telling him off about something, and it sounds like she might have a valid point, but also, her chin is jutting up toward him and her hair is working loose from its braid, and the fact that she’s beautiful has just hit Han like a hovertrain.

‘Huh,’ Han says, out loud, feeling dazed, and certainly unable to counter whatever point she’s just made. 

It’s been more than two years since they met, they’ve spent plenty of time together since, and Han’s got eyes; he’s always known she’s pretty. But he turns over this feeling in his head like he’d turn an engine part in his hands, and concludes that, yes, it’s something totally different to whatever feelings he had, or thought he had, for Leia not two minutes earlier.

She rolls her eyes at him and his heart flips over in his chest. ‘Why don’t we pick this up when I have your full attention?’ she asks.

She’s so _clever_ , as well, and funny, and kind, Han thinks dreamily. He’s really not sure why he hasn’t fully examined all these things before. But that’s it: it comes on very suddenly, but she’s got his attention and she’s going to keep it. 

***

‘I’m rooting for the Selonia Sand Panthers,’ Leia announces.

Han lets out a squeak of shock and indignation and presses pause on the crappy portable holoplayer sitting in front of them on his bunk. ‘ _Why_?’

‘I think they’re playing better,’ she says, nodding at the frozen figures on the screen. 

Han makes incredulous sounds for a moment, eventually managing, ‘My Coronet City Slice Hounds can take your Sand Panthers any day, Princess.’

She shrugs, breathtaking in Han’s shirt, perched on her knees among Han’s bedclothes. This is new, a particularly unsettling dream bringing her into bed beside him late last night, but it’s already like she belongs there. ‘Well, then I like an underdog,’ she tells him, teasing smile tugging at her lips.

‘Have you ever _met_ a sand panther?’ he demands.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Although I’ve met a slice hound. They’re very intelligent.’

‘Damn right they are.’

She inclines her head toward the screen again, and asks sweetly, ‘Would you say, based on the play Number Eight just made, that your team are living up to their namesake?’

Han is happily aware that she’s winding him up, and that she does not care much at all about grav-ball. Especially not a game Han recorded four years prior and that they’re only watching because, a week into the crawl to Bespin, they’re running out of new entertainment, and it’s about all that’s sitting about on the _Falcon_ ’s archives. 

That’s how he knows he can lean in, smirking, and say, voice low and certain: ‘The Hounds win, you know.’

‘Well,’ she huffs. ‘Now there’s little point in seeing the rest.’

‘I guess not,’ Han agrees, closing the holoplayer with a snap.

Leia’s eyes are sparkling. ‘What should we do instead?’

‘No idea,’ he says, only half teasing, because he truly doesn’t know what he should do, only what he wants.

She shuffles nearer to him, the sheets rucking up beneath her bare knees. ‘Make it up to me,’ she suggests.

‘H—’ She’s so close he can count every freckle on the bridge of her nose, and he can’t help but falter. ‘How exactly do you want me to do that, Your Worship?’

Leia leans in, smiling. ‘I think,’ she says softly, mouth millimeters from his, ‘that you owe me grav-ball tickets.’

He laughs, and she kisses him, and then quite suddenly she’s pushing him to his back, fingers going to the fasteners of his shirt, and they’re fast heading somewhere they haven’t been yet, and he thinks, _Don’t start anything_.

He also knows, even if he were to still her hands and suggest they sleep, that it’s far too late for that.

***

A forest floor is not, Han learns very fast, an especially comfortable place to kiss your—well. He’s not quite sure what to call Leia, now. He was never quite sure what to call her before, either, but now everything is wide open in front of them.

So because he’s not sure, and because it’s not that comfortable, and in no small part because their Ewok friend might come back at any moment, he stops kissing Leia and sits up properly, pulling her with him, and asks her.

Only there are a whole bunch of things he’s not quite sure about, so the question he actually asks is: ‘Now what?’

‘I think there’s a party,’ she says, a bit out of breath.

‘I mean…’ He spreads his hands, stuck. ‘With… everything. Us. The war. We have a real chance of winning this thing,’ he says, and he means the war, but he means the two of them, too. ‘What’s next?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says after a moment, and slumps back against the fallen tree behind them, looking stunned. After a second she laughs, the sound bubbling up out of her, disbelieving and joyous. ‘We… I don’t think we’ve ever thought this far. Not in more than hypotheticals, anyway. I suppose we start planning a Republic.’ Her eyes cut to his, then away, and she reaches for his hand. ‘I suppose I might start planning a life.’ Again she glances at him from beneath her lashes, biting her lip. ‘Does that sound good to you?’

He rubs his thumb over her knuckles and says, at once, ‘Yes.’

***

The house isn’t on Coruscant. 

Both their jobs are, technically, but both their jobs involve them being sent places a lot and so it doesn’t really seem to matter much where they’re being sent from. They’ve got a place they can stay in the galaxy’s capital, but Coruscant is a frankly awful planet to spend any great length of time on. For their actual home, Leia’s expressed a wish for mountains and lakes and trees, so, by gods, that’s what she’s getting.

And there’s something strange and kind of nice about ending up where he started, on Corellia, with the planet better than he left it as a teenager and him better, too.

‘This is the last box,’ Leia says as she enters the kitchen behind him, resting it on the small island. She comes to stand next to him at the window, arm sliding around his back as they look across the sweeping curve of the bay, Coronet City in the far distance and the Northern Mountains rising beyond. ‘It’s so beautiful, Han.’

‘Mm.’ He presses a kiss to the top of her head. ‘I didn’t design it, or anything.’

‘You looked for a place you knew I’d love,’ she says, ‘and it’s perfect. You could have designed it.’

He turns to fold her into a tight hug. He can appreciate, deeply, how stunning this particular bit of Corellian landscape is, and after so much time spent among the stars he’d fare no better in the heaving ecumenopolis of Coruscant than her. But the truth is that this is for Leia. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m… trying to replace anything.’

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t think that, not at all. It’s somewhere to start something new.’ 

‘I hope so,’ he says, and they stand in comfortable silence as the sun starts to slip below the horizon. ‘Probably shouldn’t admire it for too long,’ he says eventually. ‘Got a lot of unpacking to do.’

‘Oh, that can wait,’ she says, running her hands over his waist.

He raises his eyebrows. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yes,’ she says firmly. ‘I can think of better ways to spend our first evening here.’

‘Huh.’ At her prompting, he grabs her hips, boosting her up to the worktop, and leans in, standing between her legs, palms on the counter either side of her. ‘Don’t tell me. There’s a grav-ball game on.’

‘You’re very funny,’ she tells him, moving to kiss him, but he takes her gently by the shoulders and holds her back, just for a second, to look at her against the blazing Corellian sunset.

There’s a whole life waiting for them, he thinks, of love and laughter and as many grav-ball matches as they damn well please.

He can’t wait to begin.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
